


THE LMC

by carriiefoley



Category: Original Work, The LMC
Genre: F/F, F/M, M/M, Multi, Original work - Freeform, carrie foley
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2021-01-23
Updated: 2021-01-23
Packaged: 2021-03-15 19:27:45
Rating: Not Rated
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 3
Words: 16,148
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/28943676
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/carriiefoley/pseuds/carriiefoley
Summary: Five students at the elite St. Martins University form an English Literature study group and find a found appreciation for art, hedonism and the aesthete. They in particular share an interest in Wilde's "The Picture of Dorian Gray", and often spend time debating the plausibility of fictional murders.This is all fun and games until the Vice Chancellor is found dead, killed in a sick imitation of the murder of Basil Hallward - suddenly calling themselves the "Literature and Murder Club" is no longer a joke.





	1. ONE

Dulce bellum inexpertis.  
Over the course of several years, I had come to realise that a person can never truly, completely change. They can never outrun their past, or detach themselves from it so fully that they can no longer lay any claim to it. Every bad thing a person does becomes part of them, and they can take this part and lock it away, deep inside a chained up box where it rattles and groans in the farthest corner of their subconscious, but it will always be there. It will lie dormant, for so long you might even be able to forget it, but one day something will happen and for a split second the box will lurch and wild noises will emit from it and you will almost let it out. Everyone has the capacity for unimaginable evil - it is only their own goodness and moral strength that keeps them from it.  
The lesson to be learned, here, then, and it is an essential one that many people are quick to overlook: do not run from Pandora’s sealed boxes. Sit with them. Know them. It is not so much about shaking hands with the devil, but rather about offering him a seat at your table. 

*

The journey in the cab from London was tedious and I’d drifted in and out of sleep for the three hours it took to arrive in Wichester. Eventually I felt the car roll to a halt and the driver turned around, chewing energetically on what looked to me like some kind of boiled nettle leaf, to stare at me with his big black eyes. “We’re here.” He said without blinking.  
I pushed myself upright and groaned, the tightness between my shoulders protesting bitterly. The lock on the door clicked open, followed by the boot. “Thank you.” I said, climbing out and stumbling a little on numb legs. When I looked back, he was still staring at me in the wing mirror, his unrelenting jaw still working the nettle leaf.  
A janitor, or someone of the sort, with a sallow face and a damp fleece with the university logo on the breast, was standing on the curb. When I tried to gather my cases, he held up his hand dismissively and started to load them onto a trolley. “No, no,” He said in a thick, almost unintelligible accent, “You go on ahead. Take your hand luggage. The rest will be brought up to your floor.” I was taken aback, not expecting anybody to be waiting for me and certainly not expecting my bags to be dealt with for me, and I managed to take one of three before he could stop me.  
The university was walled behind wrought iron gates, and a long gravel path rolled out across an endless pristine lawn lined with trees, and then buildings, on either side. At the end of the lawn, scarcely visible from my position on the pavement, it was framed in a U-shape by three Victorian gothic-style buildings, each one with a plaque by its oak doors. The buildings, like every other on campus, had dark bricks with turrets lining the walls like pillars, breaking the windows off into pairs. A crow was perched on one of them, overlooking the arrival of new academics.  
I began the walk towards them, the janitor trailing behind me, the trolley wheels jolting and my cases banging roughly with every raised stone. St. Martins had been my goal for years, ever since I was eleven years old and rejected from their private secondary school. I’ll see you in seven years, then. I’d said as I walked out of the interview room with my mother, her arm around my shoulders, laughing into my hair. The university was prestigious and accepted only the elite, which unfortunately was synonymous with the conservative geniuses and the filthy rich. I was neither, but by some miracle they found my application to be spotless, with top grades, extracurriculars and in the end a stuffy old man who smelled like stale coffee had leaned across the table, in an office not unlike where I’d sat seven years earlier, to shake my hand. “I believe you’ll be an excellent contributor to our society,” He had said, while I tried not to stare at his shaking jowls, “You won’t receive your formal acceptance letter for another week or so, but I’m confident that I can confirm it for you now.”  
My mother told me she was proud of me that day, for the first time for several years. It had been bittersweet. I couldn’t help but be overjoyed at the acceptance into the university I had worked so hard for, and so in my lightness I let the double-edge of her words slip past, but even now I couldn’t shake the feeling as I climbed the steps to Chapel Hall that this - academic success, not any kind of personal or passionate success, that makes her look like a good parent - was the only way I was wholly enough.  
“Hart, Rhy.” I told the woman behind the lobby desk. A crowd of freshers like myself were standing around to my left, poring over maps and timetables of welcome events.  
“Fill this out.” She said flatly, handing me a clipboard and digging around in a drawer to her right. “And you’re in room… CH34.” She took back the form and slid an envelope tucked inside a leaflet across the counter towards me. “Make sure you read the accommodation code.” When I opened my mouth, she cut in, “Read it again even if you have already.”  
I closed my mouth and nodded, heading for the staircase. The elevator was, naturally, not for student use, so I resigned myself to dragging my bag up three flights of stairs, trying not to get in the way of the streams of students flying up and down past me. When I got there, the elevator doors opposite me pinged and the janitor stepped out into the cramped stairwell with me, bags in tow. He followed me wordlessly along the corridor, which had diamond-paned windows on the left, overlooking the lawn where students meandered around, the size of ants. My door was the fourth from the end, and when I stopped in front of it, the janitor unloaded my bags and placed them at my feet, then gave me a curt nod and backed away until he was out of sight.  
The key slid into the lock easily, and I froze with one hand gripping the key, the other seizing the door handle. “This is it, man.” I whispered to myself, then unlocked the door with a click and let it fall open; hesitantly at first, heavy with disuse.  
I was pleasantly surprised by my dorm room. There was a wall directly behind the door that I barely avoided hitting, with a corkboard on which laminated notices of accommodation rules, telephone numbers and such were pinned, but then the wall, on the other side of which was the en suite, gave way and opened up to the rest of the room. A single bed with a black metal frame ran parallel to the back wall, a couple of bookshelves above it in the alcove where the headframe was. I had a desk with a creaky chair, a small wardrobe with some drawers underneath it, a large empty bookshelf and a mirror. In the bathroom, I had generous counter space and a small but, to the university’s credit, not all that disgusting shower.  
It didn’t take long to unpack; the rest of my things had been sent up after me in the post and would be left waiting for me in the lobby, and my mother had been insistent that I could message her at any given moment and she’d send up whatever it was I’d forgotten with the next post output. The windows of my room, diamond-paned just like all others in this building, were long and narrow and the windowsill of one was just lower than the top of my mattress. I selected three books to place in the sill: Dostoyevsky’s Crime and Punishment, Oscar Wilde’s The Importance of Being Earnest and Bram Stoker’s Dracula. They were amongst my most prized books, the corners of the pages soft from countless nights reading their pages over and over again. Suddenly I remembered my father’s leaving gift to me, and rummaged through my bags to find it: a beautiful hardback copy of Virgil’s Aeneid, wrapped in a pillowcase to protect it. Inside, my father had tucked a note, his handwriting a slanted scrawl across a slip of yellow paper. For my prodigy, may words and art burn brightly in your soul forever. I ran my fingertips down the spine, feeling the ridges and the indentation of the title, then placed it carefully on the windowsill alongside the others.  
Downstairs, three more suitcases were at the feet of the receptionist, who saw me coming and placed her glasses, which hung around her neck on a pearl chain, on her head. “You’re Hart, right?”  
I nodded, “Rhy, yeah. These are mine, I take it?”  
She gestured to them a little impatiently. “Afraid you’ll have to take them up yourself.” When I tried to pick up only two, she waved her hand at me again, the bangles on her wrist clinking with ardour, “If you can do it in one trip that would be preferable - we can’t have people’s things clogging up the lobby, alright?”  
I made a hasty apology and struggled to get a hold of the third handle, feeling her eyes on my back until I managed to push through the doors to the stairs with my shoulder. The real struggle, I realised with a dawning sense of defeat, was going to be the stairs.  
In the end, it was a slow and exhausting process that resulted in multiple awkward apologies to people trying to get past, and tripping on the last step as I made my way up them backwards, landing hard on the carpet and only just managing to catch my bags before they tumbled all the way back down to the bottom again.  
“Woah, you alright?” A cheerful voice behind me said.  
I swore under my breath, then pushed my hair back from my face and tried to summon my most amiable smile before I stood up to face the speaker, checking my bags weren’t about to escape me again. “Yeah, yeah. All good, sorry.” I’d started to say, and stopped when I found myself face to face with a boy with an easy smile (his, unlike mine, was genuine, and I felt suddenly guilty) and black, short cropped hair which he ran a dark hand over self-consciously. I’d expected another rich white boy in a polo shirt, only pretending to care, but instead I was immediately set at ease by the genuine companionability in this boy’s eyes.  
“I’m afraid, uh, I’m afraid the trek up those stairs will probably never get any easier.” He said with a chuckle, gesturing vaguely behind me, “Although at least you won’t have to lug up huge cases every time.”  
“Yep, I feared as much.” I said breathlessly, searching his face for a hint of maliciousness. I couldn’t find any.  
“I’m Dean.” He said after a brief pause, extending his hand.  
I smiled and shook it. His hands were much bigger than mine. “Rhy.”  
“Rhy?” He echoed, “That’s a cool name.”  
“Thanks.”  
We stood there in awkward silence, until someone else came up the stairs behind me and cut between us, muttering an uncomfortable apology. Dean laughed a little self-consciously and then, catching my eye, gestured to my bags. “I could, uh, I could take one of your bags for you, if you wanted.”  
“Oh, god, no, really, it’s fine.” I said dismissively, “I’m sure you have a load of unpacking to do yourself.”  
He started to object, but then sucked his teeth and nodded. “I mean yeah, I do, but it’s really okay.” He started to pick up one of my suitcases and after a moment, I relented and let him.  
Dean walked deliberately slowly to stay at my side. He’d unknowingly picked up the lightest of the bags, and one of the wheels on mine kept catching on the carpet. “So, Rhy, was it?” He said, even though we both knew he knew my name perfectly well, “Where did you come from? Before here, I mean…”  
I shrugged. “Nowhere. Just some bog standard school in Essex. Nothing like this.”  
“Yeah, this place is… a lot.”  
“Sure is,” I said with a breathy laugh, hating how small it made me, “What about you?”  
“I went to the joint secondary. The academy - only an hour out of Wichester, maybe less. It’s exactly like this, just way smaller.”  
“Seven years of that and you’re not a complete tosser?” I said and he paused, taken aback, but then laughed.  
“Well, I’d hope not.”  
We stopped outside my door. He raised his eyebrows, then looked back along the corridor. “Well then,” He said, “Would you look at that? We’re neighbours.”  
He set my bag down at my feet, and walked backwards to the second door from mine. Turning the key in the lock, he glanced back at me. “See you at dinner, maybe?”  
I nodded, trying to busy myself with the door so he didn’t think I was staring. “Sure. And, uh, thanks for your help.”  
Dean held up his free hand in somewhere between a dismissive wave and a salute, then pushed through his door and was gone.  
Inside my room, I was suddenly overcome with a sense of disjointed homesickness. It wasn’t so much my family that I missed as much as it was my space. Every corner of my room and my walking routes at home was familiar to me, the details committed to memory; here everything was strange and unknown. Unpacking the last of my things helped a little, at least, and finally I was able to go into the bathroom to navigate the foreign mechanics of the shower before I made my way downstairs for dinner.  
Chapel Hall cafeteria was a huge room, forming an L-shape around the kitchen; queue and serving counters separated from the seating area by arcades. I joined the sleepy queue, inching forward slowly until eventually I was able to sit down, instinctively making a beeline for one of the tables at the edge of the room. I’d barely eaten a mouthful when my phone started to ring.  
“Rhy, honey? You there?” It was my mother, her voice high and shrill with false airiness, the tone I’d come to loathe; it was the same one she used when talking to distant relatives or neighbours, the one her perfected front spoke with. It was rare that she ever used it on me, but when she did, it was because she was trying to pretend our relationship was closer and less strained than it was.  
“Yeah, Mum,” I said, and to my surprise my voice cracked and for a horrible lurching moment I thought I was going to cry, “How are you?”  
There was a garbled voice in the background, then my mother replied, “Good, good. Angus is about ready - he’ll be up tomorrow afternoon. Did you get everything unpacked? Do you need anything? I can send it with Angus, it’s no bother.”  
I pinched the bridge of my nose between my thumb and forefinger, massaging the space between my eyebrows. “No, I think I’ve got everything. Settled already.”  
I could practically hear her smiling; see the triumphant glint of her eye. “That’s my girl.”  
Somewhere within me, I believed it. Like a match struggling to light, crackling and sparking before hissing out again, I believed that her pride was genuine, swelling with love for me, not where I was, but then the wave came and doused out the flame and I forced myself to remember to keep my guard up. But how could I? She was my mother - she loved me. She did, really, I knew she did, despite everything, she did. She told me so a thousand times: “You know I love you, right?” said with sad eyes and a hand gripping my tense shoulder, when sometimes she feared I didn’t love her back.  
Tears welled in my eyes and suddenly I missed her. “The food’s not as good as your cooking.” I lied, and she laughed and sighed affectionately.  
“Well, that’s a hard thing to achieve, isn’t it?” She said.  
I humoured her: “I guess it’s just not home, you know?”  
“We miss you already.”  
“Miss you guys too.”  
It was true. My mother was somewhat hard to miss, but when it came to my father, it was impossible not to. He was easygoing, spending the weekends sitting in the garden reading a book or leaning over the fish pond to inspect the koi, or dozing in his armchair in the living room, glasses pushed back into his floppy white hair. During the week, he got up at five o’ clock in the morning and stood in front of the sink eating bland porridge in his grey shirt and work trousers. He came home at six, then cooked dinner if he could beat Mum to it. He asked me about school, about the book I was reading. Sometimes we entered into political debates - debate actually meaning building onto an argument of which we shared the same view (save a few rare occasions), one of us getting up to make tea while the other ranted, sitting talking across the dinner table long after Mum had gone up to bed. My brother joined in when he could, but most of the time Mum would call him away and accuse us of pushing her out, rallying against her, armed with radical leftist propaganda to ruin dinners with.  
The following afternoon, I waited for my brother to arrive at the campus gates. I stood there, stamping my feet with my chin tucked into the upturned collar of my coat, when finally a sleek black taxi cab rolled to a stop in front of me and the back door opened.  
Angus had my mother’s genes: dark curls in a mop on the top of his head with an orange undertone, emphasised by the afternoon sunlight that caught it as he stooped to get out of the taxi. When he lifted his head, my mother’s hazel eyes greeted me. But when he pulled me into a hug, which I resisted until the comforting smell of home was too much and I let myself fall into it, he was all Angus.  
“Survived your first night on your own, then?” He said, taking his bags from the driver and pretending he didn’t hate me insisting on taking the straggler in the boot.  
“Yeah, just about.” I said, falling into step beside him. His walk was far longer than mine, since his room was in an entirely separate building at the very centre of the campus, unlike mine, which was quiet and on the very edge. Igor Hall, his residence building, was renowned for throwing secret parties every week. The rumour was that the wall had been knocked down between two rooms to accommodate them, and this was the place to go if you wanted some premium marijuana for a cheap price. Angus had told me this detail himself, careful to avoid the prying ear of our mother, when he’d come home for Christmas during his first year and was trying to distract me from how stressed revision for my A Level mock exams had made me. I’d just told him to make sure he knew how to get the smell out of his clothes before he moved there in his second year.  
“Met anyone yet?” He asked me now, heaving his bags up a set of stone steps.  
I rolled my eyes theatrically, even though I was behind him and he couldn’t see my face. “What are you implying?”  
“Innocent question.”  
“One person. Guy called Dean. He’s pretty cool.”  
Angus nodded sarcastically. “Mm. Sounds it.”  
We got to his room soon enough, sparing me from any further ridicule, and he immediately turned his back and started to unpack. I left quickly, knowing better than to loiter around him the way our parents loved to. “Meet for dinner?” I asked, already halfway through the door.  
“Seven o’ clock.” He replied, and then the door closed and I was alone in the corridor, grappling with the peculiar sensation of two different parts of my life mixing. I’d been aware of this distance all my life - for instance, I hated when my parents came to school, blurring two separate lives and tainting them. I’d tried to explain it to Angus once, and he’d laughed and didn’t understand. If he did, maybe I would’ve gone back into his room and told him about it, but instead I buried my hands in my coat pockets and made my way back home. (Home. Hm.)  
It would be easy for me to lie and paint Angus and I’s relationship better than it was, to make it sweet and inseparable, like everyone believes siblings to be. But sometimes he didn’t feel like my brother at all, and there wasn’t an energetic bond between us and besides once when Angus was involved in a minor car accident and had to go to hospital for a concussion when he was thirteen, when I’d been at home trying to sculpt something out of paper mache for school, and I’d felt sick and inexplicably wrong for what I thought was no reason besides perhaps the smell of the glue, there wasn’t a telepathic link, either.  
The truth was, family had never had much importance to me, and guilt had wracked my person every time someone somewhere preached the importance of family and blood above all else, or told me to be kinder to my parents or tell them I loved them. I didn’t know how to do any of those things. Feeling disjointed and out of place was a familiar sensation, so much so that it was almost a friend, not one I liked out of choice but out of necessity; having to find comfort in it to make its permanence more bearable.  
Back in my room, alone, in the bathroom mirror, I looked tired and worn out already. It occurred to me that it was often how I knew I’d been with family, and I laughed. A genuine, real laugh, paired with a moment in which I caught my eye in the mirror and a strange feeling of comfort and solidarity passed through me. I had myself, at the end of the day, and maybe that could be enough.  
I found that a shower worked wonders, and by the time Angus and I were sitting across from one another in the cafeteria, this time the grand, main one at Marts Hall rather than the privacy of our respective residence buildings’, I was feeling much better. I’d changed clothes, into an admittedly rather ugly knitted jumper, but I’d got it because I saw a girl on a train wearing one like it, and it had suited her surprisingly well. Angus hadn’t said anything but I could see a flicker of mockery in the way he greeted me, and I’d sat down with a sigh and said, “Okay, noted. Never wearing this again.”  
“Rhy, no,” He said with false endearment, putting his hand on the table, “Not like that. It’s just… I like it. Promise.” But then he giggled and said, “You know, I think I once saw our granddad wearing the exact same one.” He burst into peals of laughter.  
“Angus,” I said calmly, setting my fork down. “I have every mind to stab you in the eye in front of everyone. And, frankly, I don’t think a single person here would have a problem with it.”  
Angus blinked at me, hard.  
I stared back.  
“Who are we stabbing?” A voice said behind me, and when I looked up, Dean was standing next to the empty chair beside me holding a food tray, looking expectantly from me to my brother.  
I pushed the chair out from the table with my foot. “My brother doesn’t like my jumper.”  
Dean put his tray down and sat, then looked me up and down. “Maybe keep that one reserved for Christmas.”  
I rolled my eyes.  
Dean nudged me. “Are you going to introduce us?”  
“Dean, meet Angus, my brother. Angus, Dean. Neighbour.”  
Angus put another piece of steak into his mouth and looked at Dean, gave him a terse nod and said, mouth still full, “Alright?” then went back to his food, his jaw working so hard I almost worried he’d strain it.  
Dean looked at me, but didn’t say anything. Instead, he glanced around the cafeteria until his eyes settled on something, then nudged me again. “I know her,” He said, and I turned to follow where he had been looking while his own eyes went back to his food. A tall blonde girl had just walked in, wearing light-washed jeans and a luxurious looking brown fluffy coat. Circular sunglasses were perched on her head atop her milkmaid braids, and gold jewelry shone in her ears. She stopped for a moment in the doorway and looked around, surveying the room, then joined the queue, tapping absently on her upper lip with long white nails. “Her name’s Tessa Gallagher. She was in quite a lot of my classes. It’s not like her to arrive when there’s still an entire weekend of freedom left, to be honest.”  
When I looked back at Angus, he was still staring at her, frozen mid-chew. Dean saw and laughed, and Angus didn’t even notice.  
Over the course of dinner, during which Angus stole glances at Tessa Gallagher until she took a seat at the table next to us and his overt attempts not to look at her became uncomfortably excessive, I discovered that Dean (whose last name was revealed to be ‘Dempsey’) was, like me, studying English Literature, and that he had two younger sisters at home in Norfolk. He learned how to fish with his father, and his mother taught him how to cook and ride a horse. When he was much younger, from the ages of eight to twelve, he had ridden dressage competitively every summer and after a show, once he’d rubbed down his pony and gotten him ready to travel back home in the trailer, he and his mother would get ice creams from the stable canteen and sit in the front of their trailer, licking it from their fingers as it melted. He didn’t like fishing all that much, he’d told me, because it meant you either killed a fish or let them go with a great gaping hole in their mouth that rendered them helpless anyway and wasn’t any less cruel. It had been fishing that, in the end, made him go vegetarian, which he managed for a handful of months at a time and his longest streak, close to four months, ended when he got horribly ill from anemia.  
I, in turn, told Dean about my own family in Essex and how my father used to take me to bookshops every weekend, starting out as extending our walks into town so we could visit the local businesses, and eventually how he would make a whole day out of it; of us getting in the car and driving into the city and going to cafes for lunch, checking off every bookshop from TripAdvisor that we managed to visit that day, one weekend at a time. I told him about the mean girls at my old school, and he told me about his, and somewhere along the line Angus joined in to talk about his athletic competitions and the sports scholarship he’d been offered. “In the end I turned it down,” He explained with a shrug while Dean nodded sympathetically, “To come here to study to be a doctor - I mean hopefully, anyway. Athletes retire early, you know, and I want my career to be more meaningful.”  
Dean walked with me back to Chapel Hall. He walked with his head down shyly, and his hands dug deep into his pockets.  
“So, your brother is cool.” He said, when the silence grew too much.  
“Too cool to appreciate my jumper.” I grumbled, and he laughed.  
“I like it.”  
“You as good as told me never to wear it again.”  
“Only so Angus thought I was cool,” Dean said with a grin, “I actually have two just like it.”  
I scoffed. “Well, not everyone can appreciate style, I guess. My bad for trying to be authentic. I mean - did you see what he was wearing? Full tracksuit. He didn’t even wear it for the journey, he genuinely changed into it for dinner. He’s hardly one to talk, especially when I’ve seen him wearing some pretty ugly things. I mean -”  
“Rhy.” Dean stopped me, hand outstretched. I was gasping for air.  
“What?”  
“Leave a pause for breath in there somewhere, yeah? It’s just a jumper.”  
“Sorry,” I said, sighing. Dean didn’t move for a second, apparently waiting until he was satisfied, and then he cleared his throat and started walking again. “Sorry.”  
“It’s okay,” Dean said gently, “Am I allowed to say I’m glad I’m an only child?”  
There was an amiable companionability in Dean that I hadn’t seen in anyone for a long time, and I found myself laughing with him. Keep this one, I thought as we stopped outside Dean’s door.  
“Is it weird if I hug you?” He asked, and I found that I was grinning again as I opened my arms.  
“No, of course it’s not.” I said into the soft wool of his coat, and when he stepped away he was smiling a little awkwardly.  
That was what I immediately noticed about Dean, and what I would continue to value so highly of him - his complete transparency and genuinity, and his complete lack of motive besides genuine human connection. He had a way of making the world seem a little lighter when you were with him, because nothing was expected of you and neither of you had to perform to society’s little quirks and behaviours.


	2. TWO

The morning of my first class, I’d rushed breakfast in the cafeteria so I could get to the building early. I’d struggled over what to wear, wanting to make the right impression but at the same time not wanting to appear too overdressed. I loathed the fact I was concerned about it, but nevertheless I stood there in front of the wardrobe agonising over it, and in the end paired a cotton t-shirt with brown corduroy trousers and my most favourite item of clothing: an oversized tweed blazer I’d bought secondhand, which unlike the many I’d looked at before I found it, was not in any way shaped or tailored to allude to femininity, but rather it was simple and gave nothing away about the wearer beneath. The pockets were practical and deep, another reason why I adored it so much, and the blazer had a way of holding onto the scents it picked up, so when the material brushed my shoulders I caught a faint smell of perfume and wood ash.   
Professor McAllister held her classes on the uppermost floor of the Humanities building, above the lecture halls and larger classrooms we usually accommodated. In fact, as I stepped into the corridor and noted the film of dust on the floorboards beneath the windows, I wondered if this floor was even supposed to be used for teaching. A window to my right was open and September was already creeping cold. I pulled my cuffs down to my knuckles. The classroom was marked by the second door along, and judging by the marks midway across the ceiling, it had previously been two smaller rooms, gutted out with the wall between knocked down. Tables lined the floor and the teacher’s desk was at the front, facing outwards, on a little platform. A thick brown cardigan was thrown over the back of the chair, and a forgotten cup of coffee sat beside a stack of papers. The worry that I’d accidentally come to the wrong place, not at all relieved by its unusual location and appearance, began to creep in as I realised how very quiet the entire floor was.   
I was about to leave when the door opened again and a face I recognised from the cafeteria walked in, cheeks glowing pink and eyes, which were heavily lined in navy, bright and quick. “Oh,” She said, flashing a socialite smile and walking past me to take a seat at a table in the very centre of the room. “Hey. I’m Tessa.”   
I wasn’t sure what to do with my hands. “Rhy.”   
“You like to get to classes early, too, huh?” Tessa said, placing her things on the table in front of her. She didn’t take her eyes off me even when she took a long sip - deliberate, it seemed - from her Thermos, watching me cross the room until I was out of her view, taking the seat a few rows behind, beneath the window.   
The door swung open with a bang and another woman, surely not much older than myself, hurried in, arms full with a bulky laptop, folder and fresh polystyrene cup of coffee. Her hair was tied back in a low bun, but auburn bangs wiped at her eyelashes and she kept trying to flick them away. She looked up and saw us, and her face lit up when she laid eyes on Tessa. “Tessa, honey! So good to see you in my class,” She sighed theatrically and her expression was strangely maternal, “It must be, what, four years since I saw you last? Yes, that must be right. Back before I was a professor.”   
So this was Professor McAllister. She didn’t look a day over twenty two, and yet here she was with at least four or five years of teaching - degree level, no less - under her belt. Her eyes slid across to me, and her smile shifted to one of uncomfortable politeness.   
“You’re a new face,” She said. “Almost everyone is - I was fortunate enough to teach Tessa some years back at the secondary school - you’re familiar with it? St. Martins?”   
I nodded, adjusting my coat on the back of the chair so I had something to do with my hands.   
There was an uncomfortable pause, during which I cast a glance over at Tessa, who was digging in her bag for something until she eventually retrieved a lip balm and took extra care applying it. She seemed entirely oblivious to the awkwardness in the near-empty classroom, but suddenly she snapped the lip balm lid and cleared her throat. “How was your summer, Professor?”   
“Call me Emily, please.” Professor McAllister chided, but sighed again and launched into a story about the month she spent in the south of France with her husband, someone called Daniel, and their two spaniels.   
I didn’t care much to listen, and sometime during the conversation, Dean slipped through the doors followed by a boy in all black, who upon entry, pushed his curls back from his face and smiled teasingly at Tessa. Dean saw me and a grin erupted across his face, and he slid into the seat behind me, the other boy taking the one beside him.  
“I didn’t realise we would be in the same class!” He said, leaning forward on his elbows.   
I’d turned around in my chair to speak to him. “Let’s hope we don’t get sick of each other.”   
Dean noticed me glance at the boy beside him, and he waved his hand apologetically. “Oh, right. Rhy, this is Alex. Alex, Rhy.”   
Alex nodded at me, then his eyes slid downwards and I was offended, but he noticed and his eyes snapped back up again. “Oh, god, no, I wasn’t- I’m sorry. I like your shirt. Creation of Adam.”   
Dean burst out laughing, earning a look of polite concern from Professor McAllister.   
My face burned as I struggled a ‘thank you’.   
Alex’s dark eyes lingered on me, considering me for a moment before he turned to his notebook. He wore a black turtleneck with a silver chain over the top, and a long leather coat was draped over the back of his chair. Rings adorned his fingers, and a crucifix hung from his left earlobe. His tawny skin caught the cool autumn sunlight in such a way that I wondered if he was wearing some kind of makeup on his cheekbones.   
Over the course of the lesson, I learned that addressing Professor McAllister as ‘Emily’ was not just an exception for Tessa, but that we were all to address her as such. She hated the formality of teaching and, since we were all adults, wanted to get rid of the horrible secondary-school feel of classrooms. We were to sit where we liked, move as and when we pleased, and allow ourselves to be comfortable when doing so. She kept a kettle and a stash of mugs on a table in the corner by the door, which we were to use at our own convenience, and we were all to contribute to discussions where we could and help to create an environment in which we could all be equally both academically challenged and evolved.   
Afterwards, I let everyone leave ahead of me and instead of rushing off, when I got outside I skirted the corner of the building and leaned against the brick, looking out into the grassy courtyard as I lit a cigarette. I’d made a vow to myself that it wouldn’t become a habit, but the itch had long since set in and I was starting to give up resisting it. It started during the summer after year eleven exams, at a hazy party when I’d been perched uncomfortably on the edge of a sofa someone had dragged outside while a group of girls in miniskirts and glitter passed around a cigarette. They’d offered it to me, and I was already buzzed and miserable, so I took it. I’d choked on the smoke and coughed horribly, of course, and they’d frowned at me and didn’t offer again. Then it had been when I was standing outside in pub gardens trying to avoid stuffy social events with vague uncles or friends of someone’s mother, middle aged divorcees sizing me up and laughing huskily before passing me their pack and lighter. Then it was leaning out of my bedroom window struggling to light a cigarette I’d nicked from one of those aforementioned social events, which had somehow got a little damp in its travels in my pocket, and barely smoking it at all before my mother came knocking on my door and I’d had seconds to toss it out of the window, wave my arms around desperately and collapse in what I hoped was a nonchalant position on my bed, lighter tucked carefully behind my knee. I’d tried to stop, and succeeded for a while, but by the time I’d turned eighteen and my friends were handing me cash and waiting for me outside the corner shop while I bought their cheap vodka, I eventually started picking up extra packs of Malboros. I didn’t believe myself for a second when I promised my brother I’d stop.  
“Can I bum one?”   
I almost jumped out of my skin. Professor McAllister - Emily - had appeared soundlessly beside me, tying up the wrap of her coat and bouncing on the soles of her feet as she approached. She flicked her bangs out of her eyes and her eyes went back to the cigarette in my hand. her delicate brow furrowed. “What?”   
“Nothing, I’m sorry. Just, uh, I didn’t expect to hear someone like you use the phrase ‘bum one’.” I   
I cleared my throat, turning my head away from her as I blew out smoke. She saw me smiling and said, shaking my head.   
Emily lifted her chin. “Like me?”   
I shrugged. “You know. A woman of sophistication like yourself. Aren’t English teachers usually above using slang?”   
Emily undoubtedly had a nervous disposition, and I had a suspicion the cold wasn’t the sole cause of the tremor in her lip and fingers that were picking so insistently at the seam of her coat sleeve. “I don’t know; I’d have you down as a woman of sophistication yourself, Rhy.” There was a pause in which I regarded her in amusement, and then she stepped towards me and made a nudging motion with her shoulder. “So can I? Bum one?”   
I shook my head as if to clear my distraction. “Sure, yeah. Here.”   
She leaned back against the wall, eyes closed in satisfaction as she took a deep inhale. I almost laughed when her eyes shot open again, tears brimming as her face turned red and she struggled to suppress a cough. Instead, I snorted in what I hoped was a subtle manner and tipped my head skyward, pretending not to notice.   
Emily had already established herself as someone who disliked their position of authority, and I wasn’t in the habit of letting people wield imaginary power, so I didn’t restrain myself. “Do you make a habit of smoking with students, then?” I asked and this time when Emily spluttered, it was because she laughed.   
“No, not usually.” She said, and neither of us looked at each other.   
“Good. It’s bad for you, you know. And, as a professor, it’s important that you set a good example.”   
Emily pushed away from the wall. “You’re probably right.”   
“I usually am.”   
She scoffed and took one last drag before she bent to put out her cigarette on the bottom of her shoe and flick it away. “See you in class. And don’t let me catch you smoking again, alright? I’m not supposed to encourage it.”   
My other classes took place in the usual lecture halls, and from the moment we walked in to the moment we walked out, we were in silence except to contribute to the lecture. Our classes had much of the same people in them, except they were much larger; Emily’s class was the smallest, with only eight or nine of us. It was nice, being able to have familiar faces in every one of my lectures. At one point, I glanced down and saw Alex lean across to whisper to Dean, and then shake his head and continue scribbling down notes. Every so often, he stopped writing and flicked the page over to resume the doodles he’d taken up. I tried to pay attention and take the best notes I could, but the professor had a monotonous voice that seemed designed to put students to sleep. I knew I’d spend most of my free hours after his lectures teaching the content to myself.   
The rest of the day, and then the week, slipped by quickly in a blur of discussions of literature and works of art and feminism and philosophy. On Friday afternoon on my way home, Dean bumped into me on the stairs.  
“Hey!” He called out to me, and I looked up. He was standing in the second storey stairwell with his coat hanging from the crook of his arm, and a business card or address of some kind was between his teeth. He took it out. “Just the person I was hoping to see - did you know,” He began, and descended the steps quickly, only to turn around and walk up them again at my side, apparently ignoring wherever it was that he was supposed to be going, “That Marts has its very own canal you can row on?”   
I scoffed. “They boast it in just about every brochure they can slap it on.”   
“Do you want to go?” Dean said, ignoring my sarcasm, “Tomorrow morning, I was thinking. I used to be on the rowing club, so I have special permissions. Might as well make use of it.”   
I stopped at the top of the staircase and looked at him, amused. “You were on the rowing club?”  
He waved his hands dismissively. “Yes. We used to get a coach up to the university on weekends. It was that or rugby, and I love a sweaty brawl as much as the next guy, but you know - anyway, not the point. Do you want to?”   
“Why me?” I asked, folding my arms across my chest.   
“I don’t know,” Dean shrugged, “You seem cool.”   
I found myself smiling, and he took it as a ‘yes’. He grinned at me. “Great. Cool. I’ll knock for you. It’ll be early, though, so be ready, okay?” He tapped my arm and started to make his way back down the stairs, flying down them the way a kid called to dinner might.   
“Alright! But if you drown us, I will kill you!” I yelled after him.   
“Pretty sure the point of drowning is that the river does that for you!” He cried over his shoulder, and then he spun around the railing and was gone.   
On Saturday morning, as promised, I was woken up when dawn had barely risen by someone rapping on my door. From my window, I could see that the sun was only just beginning to creep through the dense fog that had settled over Wichester overnight. I staggered over to the door, eyes still blurry from sleep, and opened it to find Dean leaning in the doorway wearing corduroy trousers and a cream fisherman jumper under a massive brown coat, a satchel slung across his chest. He looked like he’d stepped straight out of a Country Living magazine. Or possibly Jeep.  
“Morning!” He said brightly, flashing me a grin.   
I stared at him, rubbing a leftover smudge of mascara from my bottom lashes.   
His smile dropped. “You didn’t forget, did you?”   
“No, no,” I reassured him as he stepped past me and into my room, “I just didn’t think you literally meant the crack of dawn.”   
“Well, obviously.”   
He was leaning over my bed to look out of my window in a way that reminded me of my father, who had a penchant of coming into my room unannounced simply to stare out at the garden in silence. I found myself missing him.   
“Anyway,” Dean said, voice muffled since his back was still to me, “You should get dressed in something warm. And if you have any snacks in here, put them in a bag.”   
I threw open my drawers and picked out some clothes. He still hadn’t turned around. I sighed, then went into the bathroom to change. When the door had closed between us and I started struggling to get my head out of my top, he started up again.   
“Have you been rowing before?” He called to me.   
“Uh, sure. Not since I was a kid, but yeah.”   
“Good. Good. Rowing’s good. The, uh, the fresh air, and the water…” The distracted tone told me he was preoccupied, likely with nosing around my room.   
Now dressed, I fumbled to brush my teeth and attempt to tame the knots in my hair. Dean was still talking, but I couldn’t hear him well enough through the wall - although, with my luck, the people in the rooms either side probably could. When I emerged, he was sitting patiently on the end of my bed, turning a book over in his hands.   
“You ready?” He asked.   
I was about to say yes, but then I stopped and glanced at the unplugged kettle on the floor by my desk, “I’m assuming you didn’t think about bringing coffee, huh?”   
“Where do you think I can get coffee from at this time in-” He watched in awe as I turned on the kettle and started putting instant coffee into a flask. “How do you have a kettle in here?”   
“They never checked when I moved in, so I figured I’d try my luck.” I shrugged. “It’s worked well for me so far.”   
Dean grinned as I handed him the Thermos and led the way out of my room. “Expect me showing up all the time for a brew now.”   
The docks were on the edge of campus, blocked from view by a line of tall fir trees and an old office building. We had to descend a set of black, slippery steps to get to it, and it didn’t look nearly as charming as it did in the brochures. A crate was upturned ahead of us with an empty lantern on it, surrounded by several smaller crates and upturned barrels. There wasn’t anybody else in sight, but Dean didn’t seem at all deterred as he picked a rowboat from the handful moored in front of us and got to work preparing it.  
“Hop in,” He said enthusiastically, and I eyed up the rickety bench and the way the boat was rocking precariously at Dean’s slightest touch. “Go on, I’ve got you.”   
I managed to sit down easily enough, and then the next thing I knew Dean was leaning, unafraid, to push the boat out and falling into his own seat, taking up the oars and grinning at me while I tried not to make it obvious how hard I was gripping the sides of the boat. We fell into a comfortable quiet, the rhythmic click of the oars in their hold and the lapping of the water against the hull lulling us into a newfound serenity. The trees that overlooked the canal swept low, brushing the surface of the water, and a flock of swallows dipped through the watery blue sky above us. I realised Dean was watching me and smiled.   
“See?” He said, “It’s not all that bad.”   
He was right. His steady movements, guiding us gently along the water, allowed me to feel the beginnings of trust forming between us. I was surprised by it and admittedly, a little afraid. Every relationship I’d ever had with someone, platonic or otherwise, had inevitably ended badly and messily, and although I tried my hardest to be good for them, I was beginning to wonder if I was the fault after all. I didn’t want this to end the same way.   
“Everything’s farther away here.” Dean said quietly, and I nodded and hummed a sound of agreement. “It’s all easier.”   
“Thank you for showing me this place.” I managed, unable to form the words to express much else.   
“You seemed like someone who could appreciate it the same way I do.” He said, and I smiled.   
The boat had taken us right into the heart of the St. Martin’s campus. We’d just passed under a bridge, and on one side was the chapel, and on the other was the staff accommodation. The bank was lined with trees, willow branches snaking into the river on either side of us. Dean was rowing, and I was leaning back on my elbows, watching the fog crawl across the shadowy surface of the water. Dean was humming to himself, and I listened contentedly, although he thought I was miles away and yet to have even noticed. I glanced to the left, and saw graffiti on the dank grey wall of the bank beside us. It felt like we were so far from anything, and since it was so early, it was eerily quiet.  
After a while, and with a little difficulty, Dean turned us around and as we made our way back to the docks, he cleared his throat. “If you wanted, I could show you another one of my spots. No boats involved, don’t worry.”   
I hesitated. I was used to politely declining and heading home to be alone, but I found that I didn’t want to say no at all. “Of course.”   
Instead of taking me somewhere else on campus, Dean took us all the way out of the gates and into the very heart of Wichester, right into the town square. He led me down a narrower cobbled street, which to my eyes only split off to the right, but when we reached the wall at the opposite end of it, small shops on either side of us, I realised there was an archway to our left, half-masked by ivy that clung to the brick.   
“Through here.” Dean told me, and he had to dip his head to get through.   
The archway opened up into a cobbled courtyard with a fountain in the centre and various picturesque shopfronts surrounding it, iron garden chairs peppered in front of them as if we had stepped through the arch and into a summering rural Italy. Dean gestured to the coffee shop immediately to our left, with the name Mercury’s displayed in jade green above the door. Inside, the cafe was intimately lit and crowded, but not so much with people as things. Mismatched leather armchairs surrounded dozens of coffee tables, swapped out for regular dining chairs and high tables the closer they got to the counter, behind which a boy our age was working a coffee machine. Artwork and vinyls lined the wall, along with signed album covers and posters and various memorabilia. Fittingly, a Queen song was playing quietly across the speakers.   
The boy behind the counter looked up and his face broke out into a grin when he saw Dean. “Welcome back, Deano boy!” He cried amiably, and Dean hurried over and they exchanged a complicated handshake followed by a one-armed hug over the counter. “Take a seat, I’ll be with you in a minute.”   
“Thanks, Phoenix.” Dean said, touching my shoulder once and nodding towards a table nestled beneath the window.   
“Phoenix?” I said as we sat down, “I could only dream of being that cool.”  
“Yeah, he’s a really good guy,” Dean agreed, “His name is only the start of it.”  
Phoenix approached us with a jug of coffee and poured us each a cup, and momentarily caught my eye. “Aren’t you going to introduce me?” He said to Dean without looking away.   
“Oh, right. This is Rhy, she’s in the same classes as me and as it turns out, we’re also neighbours. And Rhy, this is Phoenix. I found this place while I was in Wichester for the open days this time last year and ended up having to keep coming back because I liked it so much. Made excuses to get on the train down and all. My parents thought I’d met someone.”  
I smiled politely at Phoenix. “Well then, from an old friend to a new, I’ll take it as a very good sign for me that you’re not sick of him yet.”   
“Oh, I’m sick of him alright. Get out while you still can.” Phoenix said with a laugh, slapping Dean on the shoulder.   
“No, you could never be sick of me,” Dean shook his head, “You love me too much.”   
“That I do.” Phoenix said as he left, and I thought I saw him wink.   
I looked around, and then something on the wall caught my eye. “Holy- is that Freddie Mercury?”   
Dean followed my gaze and nodded, sipping at his coffee and immediately burning his mouth. Wincing, he said, “Yeah. That’s Phoenix’s dad in the seventies. Ran into him on the third floor of his hotel after their concert, would you believe it. He got his friend to take their picture on some shitty film camera and it’s been his most prized possession ever since.”   
I nodded slowly. “Reckon I’d have the same idea.”   
“Do you like it?” Dean asked, dragging my attention away from the microscopic frame on the wall.   
“The picture?”   
Dean chuckled. “No, the place… well, the picture too, I guess.”   
“God, yeah,” I assured him, deciding to take the risk and try the coffee, just about avoiding being burned. “It’s beautiful. If it wasn’t for you I’d have no idea this little area was even here.”   
He smiled. “The best things start as accidents, right?”   
I wondered with a pang if he shared my wavelength, or if he thought I was interested in something more. The truth was, my attention had been dragged elsewhere.   
Lucien Emery was someone who Dean would not consider “our sort”, by which he meant she had been claimed by the glittering rich of St. Martins’ student body due to her clear beauty and easy charisma. We, on the other hand, and the people Dean and I naturally surrounded ourselves with, were the people who didn’t demand our own possession of space the way they did, and as such were able to pass through life more or less invisibly. There were two kinds of people in the world: those who claimed and controlled attention, their movements perpetually followed as long as someone was caught in their ‘pull’. Then there were the anonymous, the people who if you did notice them, had something unidentifiable but utterly captivating about them, but instead of demanding attention they avoided it, slipping off silently and observing unobserved.   
It was because of this that I’d taken immediate notice of her when she walked into Emily’s classroom and taken a seat at the back of the room, leaning against the opposite wall and exchanging a practised smile with the boy beside her. Neither participants seemed at all invested, and I’d watched with slight amusement as both Lucien and the boys’ expressions dropped the moment they looked away from one another.   
Although it was undoubtedly Lucien’s ‘pull’ that made me notice her in the first place; the distinct shift in the room that made me aware of her before I even looked up; the more I studied her face, in the quick glances I stole whenever I had reason to look in that direction, the more I realised it was her beauty that had held my attention fast. She upheld, in some respects, a conventional attractiveness, matching the others around her as seemed the unspoken criteria for such social elite. Her cool, dark skin was completely smooth and the delicate curve of her nose completed the angelic sculpt of her features, the thick locks of her hair tied in a knot at the crown of her head, but there was something else about her that had placed itself on me and dug in, deep.   
She looked at me, only once, and whatever it was tightened its grip further and the poison began its course. There was a dangerous flicker in her eye of a thirst for aliveness, and it died the moment she looked at that boy beside her. I felt the distinct notion that she was trapped, in some way or another. I prayed for an accident like the one Dean spoke of.   
“Venus?” Dean said, and my head snapped up. I’d been staring at the molecular coffee granules that swam at the surface of my cup. My hand had drifted to the pendant around my neck: two Venus symbols intertwined at the ‘O’. I tucked it back beneath my shirt collar, and the corner of Dean’s mouth curled upwards. “I’ve been thinking a similar one myself.”   
My mind turned to Alex, Dean’s enigmatic shadow.   
“You should,” I said with a lighter tone, “We could start a club.”   
There was something different in his smile then that made me realise that up until now, he had been behaving out of acquainted decency. The face he wore now was the one of a friend.   
Eventually, once our coffee cups were empty and the conversation came to a natural end, Dean walked with me back to St. Martins. It was getting dark, and the lamplights glowed like yellow orbs above our heads. It was colder, too, and by the time I got to my door, I was shivering. When my door shut behind me and I stood in the middle of the room, shrugging off my coat and feeling the uncertainty of what to do when you first enter a room, I heard Dean’s own door slam shut, only to open and close a bare few seconds later, followed by the sound of footsteps receding down the hall. Odd guy. I thought, but soon enough the ever-growing pile of papers on my desk proved a greater priority than pondering the behaviours of my neighbour.


	3. THREE

When I arrived to Emily’s class on Monday morning, most people were already there. Tessa stood at Emily’s side, directing her through information on the papers they were exchanging. Emily was smiling at something she had said while she rifled through the pages.   
I took my seat, glancing quickly at Lucien and finding that, to my surprise, she was already looking at me, and Dean gave my arm a nudge by way of greeting. Alex walked over just after me and acknowledged me with the slightest lift of his chin. He was dressed in all black again: cigarette trousers, black jumper with a crisp white shirt collar poking out from beneath, half-masking a silver chain. He saw me staring and winked.   
“Dean, did you shut the window before you left?” He asked as he dumped his books on the desk with a loud thud that snapped Dean’s attention away from the window. It was the most I’d heard him speak since I met him.   
“Uh, no?” Dean said with a frown and a shake of his head. “I thought you did.”   
Alex sucked in a breath through his teeth, glancing at the rain that had started to come down hard outside. “Shit.”   
“Yeah,” Dean said with a grimace, “Sorry, man, I thought you meant you’d close it.”   
“Wait,” I interjected, and they both looked at me blankly, “Do you two share a room?” It was none of my business, really, and I knew that, but I was under the impression that most of the rooms in my building were the same, and I seriously doubted there was room for a second bed in mine. I looked from one to the other. They didn’t seem like they were together, but Dean hadn’t given very much away.  
Alex looked caught out. Dean made a struggling sound, “Um, yeah, sort of. I mean, Alex technically has his own room but it’s rubbish and he pulled some strings, so…” He trailed off.   
Emily had stood up at the front of the classroom, mumbling something about leaving a book in her office, pulling her cardigan across her chest beneath folded arms as she made for the door. The moment she was gone, Tessa turned on her heel and strode towards us with absolute confidence.   
“Hey, guys,” She said brightly, and I saw Alex’s eyebrows lift in amusement. Dean had been distracted by the window again, leaning back on his chair and drumming his fingers on the edge of the table. Upon being spoken to, he’d been so surprised that he’d barely managed to save himself from his chair overtipping and had struggled to catch himself. Tessa’s eyebrow twitched, and she looked expectantly to me, apparently deciding I was her safest bet.   
“So I was thinking,” She said, and I thought I saw her confidence waver for a moment, “and I just spoke to Emily about it and she agrees that it’s a good idea - but, like, you don’t have to say yes or anything, I just figured I’d ask - well, I was hoping we could form a study group? Hopefully everyone in this class, but I know study groups aren’t always everyone’s thing. I guess we’d meet in the library or on the lawns at whatever time and however often and work on things together?” She looked hopeful, and I was agreeing with little hesitation.   
“Yeah, that sounds like it could be really useful. Thank you.” Dean said behind me, and Alex was nodding.   
“Great!” Tessa exclaimed, all her confidence restored at once. “Okay, well, Emily’s going to have us sit a test on Friday, just an extract analysis, so maybe we could meet today or tomorrow? I don’t think it will be too intense, so it might just be good to get to know each other better for the first meeting.” She took a scrap of paper from her pocket and scribbled something down. “My number, in case you want to make a groupchat or something.”   
She thrusted it at me, and in the abruptness of her movement, I managed to catch the scent of her perfume: sweet and expensive. I looked down at the paper in my hand, and saw to my amusement that she was the sort of person who wrote in perfect, calligraphic italics at all times. She had also put a miniscule heart in place of a full stop after her name.   
“Sure thing,” I said, then glanced back at Dean and Alex, “So you’re both in?”   
They nodded, and I smiled back at Tessa again. She had been looking over at the group on the opposite side of the room. “Alright, well, text me when and where, and I’ll rally the boys.”   
She beamed at me, and when she smiled like that, no matter how much of it was borne out of politeness, any intimidation slipped away. Tessa gave me the impression that she was one of those people who had once been soft and incandescently warm, but through some bitter experience or another had learned harshness. The reservation behind her eyes was a familiar thing.   
The library at night was an entirely different place. I’d checked it out on one of the first days, and walked the length of the cloisters around it, framing a courtyard, and gone inside to find sunlight filtering in brightly through the high windows. The library was a U-shape framing the courtyard, each of the long sides containing rows of bookshelves with smaller, round tables tucked in between the aisles, while the shorter base of the ‘U’ had two rows of long tables, serving as a study area with more open space. I’d found that plenty of people were already milling around, talking quietly to one another or reading with their heads down. I’d felt a little guilty, seeing some of them studying before first term had even started.   
Now, the sunlight was gone and the only light came from the lamps dotted along the tables, and the chandeliers that hung from the towering vaulted ceiling. Dean and Alex had joined me in the lobby of Chapel Hall after dinner, and we’d walked together in the rain, praying that the library was open. With luck it was, and they were both hovering just outside the doorway, shrugging the rain from their coats. Alex stepped inside and brushed gently past me, stepping into the centre of the room and frowning.   
“Where’s Tessa?” He said loudly, his voice echoing in a way that startled me. “She said she was going to meet us here.”   
A sound came from behind him and he whirled around in time to see a blonde head emerging from behind a shelf. “Oh!” Tessa cried, “Hey. Sorry, I didn’t realise you’d come in.” She stepped into the aisle between rows of shelves, gesturing for us to join her at the table behind her. Despite the rain that dripped from Alex’s hair, Tessa looked completely untouched; her hair was delicately tousled and fell perfectly down her back and her makeup, despite a day of wear, was immaculate. I marvelled, not knowing how she could do it.   
“So,” Alex said as the rest of us took our seats, keeping his hands in his pockets and spinning slowly on his heel to look around. “Is this all of us?”   
Tessa shook her head as she straightened her coat over the back of her chair. “No, no, I managed to rally one more. Lucien Emery.”   
My breath hitched without me telling it to and I hated myself for it.   
The library door swung open again on cue, and a drenched figure stepped inside, swearing under their breath, although apparently not quietly enough because Alex had started to laugh as he sat down, glancing over his shoulder with a mirthful cock of the eyebrow. At the sound Lucien’s head snapped up, and she pushed her braided hair back from her face. “Hey!” She said with an apologetic smile, and hurried over, her footsteps echoing loudly.   
“Everyone, this is Lucien. Lucien, this is Rhy, Alex and Dean.” Tessa said with a wave of her hand, preoccupied by something on her phone, even though we had already been acquainted on our very first day of class.   
“Luc.” Lucien corrected, holding out her arms towards Dean, who stood up when she arrived, and pulling him into a tight hug. Tessa didn’t appear to notice.   
Dean slung his arm around Lucien’s shoulders and spun her round to face the rest of us again. “Luc is an old friend,” He said, “Just like Alex.”   
Lucien scoffed. “I wouldn’t exactly call Alex an ‘old friend’.” I heard her mumble as she sat down next to me. The corner of my mouth turned up, and then I realised Alex was frowning at me and forced my expression to straighten.   
“Alright!” Tessa said with a sharp clap of her hands, and I was amazed by the show of ‘teacher’ she was putting on: standing up with all of us seated, looking expectantly up at her, while she held a stack of papers in her arms and began passing them around. They were exemplar essays and extracts, some already annotated, others blank. There were also blank essay plans, and I wondered where on earth Tessa had gotten it all from. Then she leaned forward, pressing her palms into the table and rocking on the balls of her feet, and I was reminded of the way she’d been leaning on the corner of Emily’s desk that morning. I hadn’t known what the conversation was about, but I knew Tessa was a talented charmer.   
The bell in the church tower was what finally urged us to head home for the night. It rang out eleven times and Alex groaned, stretching in his chair, which he’d been slouched in with one foot up on the table for at least an hour. “Jesus,” He grumbled, “Is it eleven already?”   
Tessa had been dozing off in her palm, although she didn’t realise I’d noticed and at the sound of Alex’s voice she jumped up and forced an eager smile. “Right, well, I suppose we should all get some rest,” She began scraping papers towards her. They’d all become a jumbled mess on the table, and I couldn’t be entirely sure who’s was who’s. “Thank you for agreeing to do this. I feel like it’s been really productive.”   
Dean slipped behind her. He’d been gathering up stray papers, more successfully than she had managed, and he tapped her on the head with them before dropping them in front of her. “Thank you.” He said, and I saw Alex roll his eyes. When he’d made his way around the table and was standing behind Lucien, he said, “Suppose you’ll be going back to the vampires tomorrow, then?”   
Perhaps it was just because it was late and we were tired, but she didn’t share his lightheartedness. “First of all, what do you mean vampires? Second of all, I was actually going to ask if any of you guys wanted to meet in the cafeteria for lunch tomorrow, but since you’re being like that, don’t worry about it.” She said with a huff.   
Dean leaned down and slipped his arms around her shoulders, tucking his chin into the nape of her neck. He’d made their closeness apparent throughout the whole evening with his shameless affection, but since nobody else seemed at all fazed, I resolved not to care either. “Luc,” He said in a tone of mock gentleness, “I’m only playing. I’d love to have lunch with you - guys?”   
We all nodded, and when Lucien looked at me and saw me accept, it was almost like she looked relieved.  
When we left the library, Tessa and Lucien heading off in the opposite direction, Alex stopped just outside the door and rooted around in his pocket for a cigarette. “Shit,” He said, “You got a light?”   
I nodded, and held it out for him. I always liked seeing people’s faces in that flamelight, the moment when the end of their cigarette hissed and burned brighter and the tapered points of their features touched with yellow light. I thought people looked most beautiful like that, in softer light that somehow made all their lines sharper.   
Dean walked beside us, keeping a little distance. “Do you think I upset her?” He asked.   
Alex sucked in a breath, examining his cigarette. “Yeah.” He said simply, earning a look of horror from Dean. “I mean - look, it doesn’t matter who your friends are. They could be the worst people in the world, and yet you’d still want to defend them because they’re your friends and that’s how it is. Yeah, I think those people Lucien’s been sucked in with are conceited little bastards and I can’t really stand them, but she knows that. She doesn’t need reminding, especially not from me. And you heard her - she wants us.”  
Dean was quiet. “You’re right.” Alex nodded. “But I still think she should know she deserves better. That can’t be wrong, can it?”   
“No,” Alex conceded, “But you have to have the right technique, Dean, my friend. It’s about tact, yeah? Gently telling Luc that you think they peaked two years ago already and are going to spend their lives thoroughly depressed and in an affair or being cheated on with one, but with a lot of inheritance money to show for it, and that there are many, many words you could choose to describe them more succinctly but every one would make your grandmother roll in her grave. Right?”   
I had to agree. “He’s right.”   
Dean nodded at us slowly. “Right.” Then, apparently not being able to bear it anymore, he walked on ahead and let Alex and I smoke behind him. I felt bad, but Alex didn’t seem deterred and if I was being honest, I’d been itching for a smoke all day, all too aware of the weight of the pack in my pocket.   
I could feel Alex watching me, but I kept my eyes focused on the path ahead. I’d had a hard time figuring out Alexander Conorry since meeting him. He had been quiet, but I didn’t believe for a second that it was borne of shyness; he was quick to raise an eyebrow or make a sarcastic retort and existed in his space with ease, as if everywhere he went he was at home. During that evening, he’d silently decided I was his partner and we’d gone through essay plan after essay plan together, mocking the exemplar essays for how strained the tone was, trying far too hard to sound scholarly and making a horrible mess of it. Alex’s narrow eyes were slipping over me again and I got the feeling he was trying to figure me out, exactly as I’d been doing to him.   
“How did you meet Dean?” I asked finally, figuring that since Dean appeared to be the mutual factor between everyone, that it was a safe bet.  
Alex shrugged. “Open day.”   
“What, you actually managed to make friends at one of those?”   
The corner of his mouth quirked up. “I wouldn’t say friends.”  
“Oh.” Was all I said, after a too-long pause.   
He seemed amused. “Naturally it was a little awkward when we kept running into each other at the same events. But you know, I can be quite charming, so we managed to smooth it all over easily enough.”   
“And you share a room now?”  
“If only we shared a bed.” He said and for a second I thought he was serious, but I looked over and he was pouting comically as he flicked his cigarette. “What about you?” He asked.   
“How did I meet Dean?”   
“Sure.”   
“Ran into each other on the stairs on my first day. And then again a week later, and he asked me to go rowing with him. Showed me this cafe, too, it was really good.”   
“Mercury’s.” Alex said with a nod.   
I couldn’t help but feel a little disappointed. Dean had made it seem as though he rarely took anyone there, and I’d felt honoured to have been shown that modicum of trust. I wondered if he’d done the same to everyone he’d met and seen something in, to draw them in. I pushed the feeling back. Reading too far into it would only hurt me with phantoms.   
“He doesn’t.” Alex said bluntly.   
“What?”   
“He doesn’t show a lot of people. It means he really likes something about you, and I trust his judgement, so I’ll really like you too.”   
I smiled.  
“When you guys are done making friends,” Dean called impatiently over his shoulder - we’d reached Chapel Hall, and he was at the top of the steps, “Alex, would you be so kind as to give me your key?”   
Alex scoffed and put out his cigarette. “No need, I’m done.”  
I followed behind, taking the steps two at a time, half-listening to the bickering that had broken out between them.   
On Friday afternoon, after the exam, I’d started to develop a headache on my walk home and by the time I got to my room, it was as though someone was tightening a clamp around my temples, agonizingly slowly. I went to lie down, staring through half-open eyelids at the bobbled paint strokes on the ceiling. I got them when I was feeling particularly anxious. Tension headaches, my mother had told me they were called. They didn’t come during the attack, though: instead they came afterwards in the adrenaline crash, the last thing to be released. It made me think of pulling a plug and watching the water whirl away, faster and louder than when it arrived, or of leeches and blood-letting the way they used to do during the Middle Ages, to release toxins and impurities. I needed someone to pull the plug, to relieve my headache and ease the crash.   
I knew Angus suffered too. He never told anyone, and to his credit I had never been much good at seeking help either so I could hardly critique him for it, but he would grow pale and I knew to watch his eyes. They would dart around, searching for an exit should he need it, and a chair, should he need that too. Most of the time he could keep his voice level, but he couldn’t control his hands from shaking and his foot from bouncing. I noticed because I did exactly the same. I knew my mother had prescriptions that would appear in their pale green medical bags every so often, left on the kitchen table or by the mail on the table in the hall. I’d never asked what they were for, and even if I’d tried to read the label, I wouldn’t know what it meant, but as the years went on and five or six solitary years passed in sudden dizziness and panicked breathing and rushing for the escape, I began to wonder if it was genetic. I’d asked about going to a doctor, once, and my mother had told me not to, because it wouldn’t help and all they would do is give me medication. I remembered being angry, because she was denying me something she had granted herself. But a larger part of me was relieved, because the truth was I was terrified: of the waiting rooms and the appointment, which in itself was most likely to trigger an attack, and of being invalidated and told it was not anxiety, but rather some phony trick of the mind that I just needed to practise mindfulness to overcome. I never went.   
The ceiling lurched and I blinked rapidly, suddenly feeling a sense of vertigo. I’d been staring at it for too long. I pushed myself up on my elbows, and then sat up, pressing my fingers to my forehead. The pain had eased a little. I got up slowly and went into the bathroom, turning on the shower and waiting for the water to heat up. I was standing in front of the shower with my shirt in my hands when I heard somebody knock on my door.   
“For god’s sake.” I grumbled, turning the shower off and shrugging my shirt back on. I was still fumbling to do up the button on my trousers when I opened the door to find Alex standing there.   
“Uh, hey,” He said, then looked down at my hands. His eyes flicked past my shoulder into the room. “Sorry, I can come back later if you’re busy.”   
I shook my head. “You’re here now. What’s up?”   
He stepped closer, lowering his voice. “Me and Dean, we’re trying to gather up the guys. You, Tessa, Luc, to hang out, I guess, as a little celebration of our newfound besties club.” He leaned in and opened his jacket, revealing a bottle of Jack Daniels tucked into his belt. “We’re fully stocked, if it’s any persuasion.”   
I leaned out of my doorway to look down the corridor. Unbelievably, Dean was standing there watching and I realised that he’d been trying to spy on us, probably hissing instructions at Alex before I’d opened the door. He saw me and for a moment tried to hide, but thought better of it and gave me an awkward smile like a guilty child.   
“Alright,” I said, and pulled the door closed behind me. Alex straightened his coat, then led the way into their room two doors down.   
Their room was just like mine in size, except with two beds facing towards us, a single desk in between them and a bookshelf at the feet of the furthest one. There was little floor space to speak of. Dean flung himself onto the nearer bed, and I looked at the shelf above his head, in which I saw rows and rows of books and a record player boasting a Bowie album. Alex had taken a seat on the other bed, sitting cross legged and leaning down to pull a crate out from beneath it. He held out the bottle from beneath his jacket to me, and I took it without saying anything.   
“Christ,” Dean said, and turned around to see him staring at us with an expression of mixed exasperation and mirth, “It’s just gone four p.m.”   
I glanced back at Alex and he shrugged. I set the bottle down on their desk and instead busied myself with looking at the decorations they’d covered the wall with. Pages had been cut from books and stuck up like an extremely rough wallpaper job, with film camera pictures and sketches pinned up in various places between them. I recognised Alex in most of the pictures, his habit of wearing dark colours making it so that only his face and the flash of a silver-adorned hand was visible. Dean was only in a few. There was one I liked that must have been taken in the summertime, of the willow branches dipping into the canal. The green was lit through with warm, glittering sunlight. Another of a building I didn’t recognise, a stone barn with a bird of prey perched on the roof.  
“You take these?” I asked the room, my fingertips hovering above the last picture.   
I heard Dean clear his throat, a telltale sign of poorly masked pride. “Yeah, I did,” He said, and I could hear him smiling, “My dad gave me his old camera as a good-luck-on-exams present before I sat my exams last year.”   
I let my finger run across the wall. “And what about the book pages?”   
“That was me.” Alex said. His voice was muffled, and when I looked around he had a cork between his teeth. “They’re all from really old, broken copies the library back home were trying to get rid of, don’t worry.” He looked up and flashed a grin, even with the cork. Someone gets it. I thought. Dean still looked unconvinced - apparently for him, the pain of tearing up a book was too great.   
We were interrupted by a knock on the door, and when Dean called for them to come in, Tessa and Lucien stepped inside. “Ay, you found us!” Alex cried, raising a bottle. Tessa grinned and, without being invited, sat down right beside Dean, who looked a little taken aback but tried hard not to show it. Lucien and I exchanged a glance.   
“Here, Luc,” Alex beckoned her over and handed her the glass he’d just poured, “Rhy wouldn’t.”   
Lucien raised her brow as she took it, then settled herself by perching on the corner of their desk. “Aw, are you above day drinking?” She asked me, but didn’t drink herself, just let the glass hang from her fingers as she swung her feet. I must have been lingering awkwardly by the wall, because she gave the chair by her knees a tap and pushed it out for me to sit.   
“How did you find the exam, then?” Dean asked, leaning back onto his pillows and spinning a bottle opener around his index finger.   
“No, Dean!” Alex cried theatrically, “You don’t talk about your probable doom at a celebration party.”   
“Oh, is that what this is?” Tessa asked, “For what, exactly?”   
Some hours later, the night had set in and we were all sprawled across the room, flush-cheeked and drunk. Alex was sitting with his back against the wall, legs over the side of the bed, where Dean was leaning on his knees, having finally cracked and not been able to take Tessa’s gradual movements closer to him anymore. Tessa herself was tucked into the windowsill, staring out absently, and I was half-sitting, half-lying a short distance away from Alex, Lucien with her head on my shoulder.   
“Not to be like, that guy,” Dean said softly, breaking the silence, and we all groaned collectively, “No, no, hear me out - I was just thinking… why can’t people be allowed to just be? Why do I have to label myself and fit myself in all these bloody boxes so that other people can be comfortable, y’know, and know who I am with all these exact, easy definitions. Isn’t it enough to just be, and do whatever and whoever I want, in whatever moment? Can’t that be enough?”   
Alex sighed. “Felt that one,” He reached out and ran his fingers through Dean’s hair as he said it, who leaned back into the touch. “What brought that on?”   
“Nothing,” Dean shook his head, “I was just thinking about it.” And then he chuckled thickly and shifted, “I think I’m just drunk.”   
“Well, who says you can’t? Just be?” I asked, even though I knew the answer.   
“Society.” Dean said. Even from here, I saw his forehead screw up. “Fucking society. You know, even being ‘unlabelled’ is a label in itself. It’s so stupid. Why do I have to explain myself with all these neat little identities? What is society so afraid of, that it can’t have everything be easy and simple and definable?”   
Lucien fidgeted, but didn’t move her head from my shoulder. “You’re right,” She said quietly, “So let’s agree something right now, between all of us, okay? That we don’t need labels. We don’t need to explain ourselves, even if everyone expects us to.”   
“Careful, Luc,” Alex crooned, “You’re starting to sound like one of us.”   
“Well, aren’t I?” Lucien snapped, sitting up. I silently cursed Alex for provoking her, all too aware of the coldness of my shoulder now she was gone. “What exactly are ‘you’, anyway? You’re just as bad as Dean - what about all that talk of labels just then, huh? Does that not extend to me?”   
Alex slurred his words a little when he spoke. “N-no, Luc, I’m sorry. I just meant… well, I can’t imagine your friends being on our side about this, can you? They’re the exact kind of people to still ask if you’re gay like it’s some kind of filthy secret.”   
Lucien huffed and crossed her arms over her chest. “But you labelling them as - what is it, vampires - is okay?”   
“I feel like one of those is considerably worse than the other. Homophobia versus not liking homophobes, you know.”   
Lucien leaned back against the wall. “They’re not my friends.”   
“They’re not?” Alex said hopefully, but Lucien looked upset.   
“No. You know it, I know it - I’m only mad because I know you’re right. Even if it does go against everything you were just saying about prejudice, Dean. They - they are like vampires. Banding together just because they’re the same - rich parents who think pay gaps aren’t real and the glass ceiling is just a communist myth, and who think classicism isn’t real even though they wouldn’t dream of shopping anywhere ‘low brow’, god forbid people think they’re poor. Wealth is the only value they know, and beauty to them is the elite. They rope you in and suck everything out of you to make you fit. They only dragged me into it because they think I’m one of them, because my parents have money and my mother is alumni. But I’m not. Not for a second. Why do you think I’m here at all, huh? Because I saw you guys on our first days in class and how you weren’t putting on a ridiculous show around each other, and I wished I could talk to you. Then Tessa invited us to this study group thing and they all laughed but I said yes because god damn it, I’m sick of people like them controlling everything I do. Then I realised I was right, I was right to like you guys and I was right about wanting to get out from their - their black hole; their vacuum - and I didn’t want you all to leave because you’d go back to each other and I’d go back to them and I’d never get out. And I don’t think you’re better than them for the way you label them like that, but I know the difference there is that your is based on truth, not ideals.”   
Alex was silent. We all were, for a while, and then Alex raised a bottle in the air. “To Lucien Emery, the first vampire to turn back.”   
I raised my glance. Dean did too, with a weak cheer, and Tessa had been distracted by the window and joined in slightly too late.   
“What are we now, then?” I said, my tone heavy with sarcasm, mostly to hide the rising hope inside me, “Bloody best friends or something?”   
“Something like that.” Dean agreed, taking a swig from the bottle Alex passed to him.   
I woke up the next morning and was immediately aware of the stiffness in my neck. I was still sitting up against the wall, my neck having been at a ninety degree angle for most of the night. I groaned and went to move, but realised I couldn’t, because Lucien was asleep with her head in my lap, one hand on her cheek and the other just above my knee. She was curled up on the remaining space of the bed, almost catlike, and her face in sleep was content. My hand was on her back, and suddenly I was terrified to move it, the ease of drunkenness gone and with it, whatever confidence we’d had to sleep like that.   
Alex was asleep on his back, one leg bent and the other hanging over the side of the bed, crossing just in front of mine. Dean was back on his own bed with his hands behind his head, Tessa curled into his side with her hand on his chest.   
I must have moved, because Lucien groaned softly and lifted her head slightly. Without thinking, I reached down to stroke her hair, feather-light in case I bothered her.   
“Morning.” She said with a small sigh.  
“Morning.” I said, and my voice was thick and so soft I wasn’t sure she even heard me. I took my hand away, but she made a noise of discontent and I put it back. “Sorry, I didn’t mean to wake you.”   
“S’okay, you didn’t.”   
We stayed like that for several minutes, and I was acutely aware of the weight of her temple on my thigh and her fingertips, which had moved higher up my leg. I felt too stiff, scared of moving and making her uncomfortable. My fingers were still running over her braided hair.   
Alex stirred beside me, groaning ungracefully as he pushed himself up onto his palms. “Fuckin’ hell.” He moaned, eyes squeezed shut. When he opened them and saw me awake, he sighed. “Morning.”   
“Morning.”  
He dragged himself upwards, leaning on his knees, and when he straightened up he looked down at Lucien, then across to Tessa. “Like bloody cats.”   
I laughed, jolting a bit and immediately checking that I hadn’t woken Lucien.   
Alex reached behind him to push open the window and rooted around the cluttered windowsill for his cigarettes.   
“Aren’t there smoke alarms?”   
“Nah,” He shook his head, “You know how many kids get high in their rooms? More smoke than a housefire.”   
I glanced up at the ceiling above the door, where a red light blinked steadily. Alex didn’t seem concerned, though, pressing his shoulder into the condensation on the glass, which apparently had managed to get inside, and angling his head upward towards the opening. He saw me watching and offered me his cigarette. I shook my head and gestured to Lucien, holding me in place, and he shrugged, still holding it out, and in the end I took it anyway.   
“Look at them,” Alex nodded towards Dean and Tessa, “Do you think he knows?”   
I shook my head, giving back his cigarette. “Dunno. Hope he does, otherwise it’s pretty weird, no?”   
“He’ll wake up anyway in a minute, just watch.” This time Alex didn’t bother turn to the window, and instead deliberately directed his exhale into the middle of the room. Immediately Dean’s nose crinkled and a moment later he was awake and glaring.   
“Oh for god’s sake, Alex,” He groaned. “If you set off the alarm, you do know it’s me who’ll get done for it, right?”  
Alex said nothing and turned back to the window.   
Dean tried to reach up to wipe a tired hand across his face, but apparently only just noticed Tessa’s head on his arm because he froze and looked down with utter bemusement. “The hell?” He grunted.   
“I’ll take it he didn’t know.” I whispered, and Alex sniggered beside me.   
Dean sat up, pushing Tessa off of him none too gently, sighing as he reclined back against the wall. “Were we sleeping like that the whole night?”   
“There’s no telling, mate,” Alex said with a sniff, “But probably.”   
Dean glanced at Lucien. “Were you?” He asked me.   
“No telling.” I said simply. I couldn’t quite remember, but I had a vague memory of, on the approach of two or three a.m., Lucien throwing herself across my lap and lying on her back so she could look up at me, playing absently with my necklace while she rambled about the myth of Medusa.   
There was movement beside Dean, and a moment later Tessa was awake, rubbing the sleep from her eyes. She saw Dean looking at her and her face flushed scarlet, sitting as far from him as she could and crossing her arms over her chest modestly.   
“There she is,” Alex purred, tapping out his cigarette into an ashtray. “Did you sleep well?”   
She scrunched her nose, still groggy from sleep. “What?”   
“You certainly looked cosy.”   
Immediately Alex got struck in the face by a pillow, and he almost fell off the windowsill.   
“Sorry,” Tessa was saying to Dean, ignoring the stream of swearing coming from the other side of the room, “I didn’t mean to-”   
“It’s fine,” Dean said in what was supposed to be a reassuring tone, but ended up being dismissive, “You were warm.”  
Alex, having calmed down, looked at me and raised an eyebrow.   
Tessa got up and shuffled over to the mirror behind the door, inspecting her hair, which even in sleep still managed to look immaculate. I half-consciously watched as she frowned at her reflection, dragging her fingertips under her eyes. She stepped back slightly and I jumped when her eyes met mine in the mirror, quickly busying myself with looking elsewhere. Lucien stirred again, and she pushed herself up and joined Alex and I in leaning against the wall. She smiled wearily at us, and Alex caught my eye and winked.

**Author's Note:**

> hii !! thank you so much for reading, ily <3   
> leave some kudos and feedback if u wanna hehe


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